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Loading... The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag: A Flavia de Luce Novel (Flavia de Luce Mysteries) (edition 2011)by Alan Bradley
Work InformationThe Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley
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Usually not a fan of books with 11 or 12 year old narrators, but enjoyed this.A mild and amusing mystery with an entertaining and imperfect tween narrator ( ) Really enjoyed this mystery set in 1950 and told from the viewpoint of an eleven year old girl, Flavia de Luce. Flavia is the youngest of three sisters whose father is often withdrawn and absorbed in his stamp collection, and whose mother was killed in a climbing accident soon after Flavia was born. Intelligent, imaginative and precocious, she is a keen amateur chemist with a special interest in poisons. Flavia views the adults around her with a shrewd clear eyed understanding and is extremely adept at manipulating them when necessary, but is at the mercy of her cruel older sisters. Her one ally is the manservant at her family's stately home, Dogger, who has psychological issues due to wartime experiences, but is also very astute. This is the second in a series which consists of seven books with an eighth due out this September. On the strength of this, I will definitely read the others. Again, as with the first book in the series, whilst I enjoyed this murder mystery written from the view of the 11 year old prodigy Flavia de Luce, I found the self consciously "English" eccentricity a little too overdone, almost as if we were in a post WWII theme park version of the UK. The anglophile POW was just a step too far for me. All in all a pleasant read but I won't be seeking out the rest of the series.
The secret of the novel’s charm involves the way in which Flavia teeters on the border between precocity and childishness, spouting faux-cynical epithets that result from the fact that her intellectual gifts far outpace her emotional capacity. All in all, it’s a perfectly detailed and credible English village in the Agatha Christie manner, inhabited by people you can believe in and sympathize with. Belongs to SeriesFlavia de Luce (2) Is contained inAwardsNotable Lists
Flavia de Luce, a dangerously brilliant eleven-year-old with a passion for chemistry and a genius for solving murders, sets out to solve the murder of a beloved puppeteer. All clues point toward a suspicious death years earlier and a case the local constables can't solve--without Flavia's help. No library descriptions found. |
LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumAlan Bradley's book The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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